HIP, HIP HORRAY

We live in an age when we can get replacement parts - new knees, new kidneys, new hips, new liver.  I'm holding out for a new personality.  Just ask my kids and husband - they'd cheer.

The problem with getting a new body part is...like an old car, when you replace one part, another starts going wrong.

I got a new hip in December.  I didn't really need it just then, but I knew I would need it sometime in the future.  So I figured I was healthy and fit enough to do it while I could still walk.

First problem - I can't take the "good" drugs.  Ideally one should be "gorped" out for at least the first two weeks after a surgery where they cut a piece of you out, throw it away and put something fake in you.  It hurts!  In the hospital they kept me happily drugged with IV medication and an anti-nausea drug.  One of the drugs gave me hallucinations.  How do I know?  Because I had a lovely long chat with an absolutely gorgeous transvestite for about an hour.  She was wearing a black curly wig, false eyelashes, fishnet stockings, high heeled boots and shorts, and a lot of jingly jewelry.  I actually sent my husband down the hospital corridors looking for her because our conversation had been so pleasant.

So they discontinued that drug.

On to rehab.  Nothing they could give me helped the pain.  Any morphine or codeine made me nauseous so I toughed it out. What I got was a lot of sympathy and extra ice cream.  (At this wonderful rehab center, you could get ice cream day or night.  I did and came out five pounds heavier.  Nothing like an ice cream sundae at midnight to ease the pain.)

Now three months later...I still have muscle pain in the hip and...my back aches, my other hip hurts, my knees throb.

Was it worth it?  I'll let you know in about six more months.

I HATE the people who had similar surgery and say - "Oh it was easy."  Or "I was walking and playing gold in two months."  Either they lie or else I'm just a bad healer...or a kvetch...or both.

Brain Cells - where have they gone???

I can feel them dying, slowly, every day.  If they made a sound I could count them as they die.  But they are silent.

Words come more slowly now, causing my brain to turn in to a giant thesaurus, reaching to find a substitute for the word I've lost.  It's like going through a rolodex, looking to see what will fit.

The solution is...to have a lot of friends.  Why?  Because they can fill in the word you've lost.  It's best to have friends around the same age as you because they'll be more sympathetic, since they are going through the same thing!

It's no big deal if you recognize that probably from age 50 on those cells start dying...maybe even younger.  My 53 year old daughter called me today to ask me what she was supposed to pick up at my house and neither of us could remember.  And guess what - I remembered first!

The saddest result of dying brain cells was the demise of our high school class valedictorian.  He was brilliant and a Rhodes Scholar, a clerk for the Supreme Court and had a successful career in a prestigious law firm until...his glorious brain failed him.  He was diagnosed with frontal-temporal dementia which has been described as Alzheimer's on speed. Of all the brains in all the world this terrible condition picked his.

I guess I should be grateful that my brain still works well enough to do daily crossword puzzles, read and enjoy books, figure out how to get from point A to point B, communicate fairly well and be able to write this.

Oops, I think another brain cell just died.

What is Sleep?  I've Forgotten.

I belong to the post menopausal 3 a.m. club.  At 3 a.m. every night I wake up.  It's usually to go to the bathroom but then I cannot fall back to sleep.  I thought I was the only one who was sleep deprived, but just about every woman I know over the age of 60 has the same problem, at the same time.

Why don't we form a 3 a.m. club?  We could chat on line, exchange recipes, brag about our grandkids, complain about our children and just plain gossip.  Instead we suffer silently.

It's because when we went to that sleep clinic to make sure we didn't have apnea, we were told not to turn on any lights, not to read in bed, not to watch television and to only go to bed to sleep.  Their professional advice was get out of bed, walk around, go to another room and only get back in bed when you're tired.

Have you ever tried sneaking out of bed and walking around when there's a spouse sleeping next to you who's sure the slightest noise means someone's trying to break in to your house?  Tried it in the dead of winter when the heat has been turned down? I have a friend who used to sneak out of bed quietly and go in to the bathroom to read.   Not my idea of a fun place to be at 3 a.m., book in hand.

I tried meditating, deep breathing, closing my eyes and looking for a bright light to focus on.  I tried a different pillow, a better mattress, a completely darkened room. I even tried drinking a glass of warm milk before bed time but that just pushed the 3 a.m. potty call up to 2 a.m.

I suppose one day I might actually sleep the required six hours again, but when?

Hair...what a curse!  No matter what kind of hair we have we almost always long for something else.  Straight hair?  You want curly.  Curly hair? You want straight.

As an older woman, I was tired of a lifetime of fighting with my curly hair.  Rain was the dreaded enemy.  Before straighteners, there was Dippity Doo.  Remember that thick pink gunk?  I'd goop down my banging and taped them straight, only to have them boing up again once the tape was removed. Then I tried to have it straightened...and it rebelled and fell out.

So as I aged and my hair got thinner, I cut it off.  Yes, really really short.  So short that women would come up to me and ask if I was a cancer survivor.  No, I'd say, I'd a bad hair survivor. The response is often - oh, I wish I had the courage to cut my hair that short.

You have a choice - be a slave to your tresses or free yourself!

It was during a period in my life when I felt I didn't have control over most of the things that were happening to me and around me.  But the one thing I could control was my hair...so I cut it off.  I went to a men's barbershop the first time and told him to cut off anything that curled.  Later I found a "proper" hairdresser and have been going to him ever since, to avoid that shaved neck thingy that barbers do.

It's turning grey faster than I'd like but I refuse to color it and support a bad habit.  Besides I need it cut once a month and I'd weep over the expense of having my colored curls lobed off.

I am so grateful to my mother that I had a easy birth, hence a well-shaped head!  And grateful to Bill, my hairdresser, for the great haircuts. My biggest regret - never being able to flirtatiously flip my hair. Curly hair doesn't flip.

I also grateful that I no longer have to buy any hair product except shampoo.

Free yourselves, ladies, cut your hair off!

Spring is slowly springing and that means ... time for all those medical checkups

First the dreaded colonoscopy.  Once every five years (if you check out okay at the last one) I get to drink copious amounts of fluid that runs through you like Niagara Falls.  The doc prescribed some odious cherry-flavored powder that you mix in a gallon container.  And I refused to drink that much liquid.  I knew I would cease to swallow half way through.  No way!  I was so grateful when his office said there was another way, with less to drink.  Of course it cost a lot more, but it's only every five years so I splurged.  (Splurging on something that makes you poop somehow sounds wrong - splurging on a new purse or pair of shoes makes more sense.)

The anticipation was far worse than the event, except I had to get up at 5 a.m. to finish drinking the vile liquid and I am not a morning person!

I'm happy to saw everything came out just fine...excuse the pun.

On Monday my sister underwent surgery because she had diverticulitis and developed an abscess in her intestines.

How did she let it get so bad?  Isn't the pain of diverticulitis a good clue that something's wrong?  When was her last colonoscopy?  I don't want to ask her these questions - they would only make her feel worse.

Yesterday I had my annual mammogram. No big deal.  Once a year, a few minutes of slight discomfort and done until next year.  I do wish a woman would invent a better machine.  I know it was a man because only a man would want a woman's breast squished like that.  Imagine if men had to undergo a penis flattening by pressure...the equipment would be improved quickly.

PLEASE have your regular checkups!  Make a check list for yourself and actually look at it at least once a year!  If my sister would have done that perhaps she'd still have the feet of intestines they had to remove.